Newsletter Crew: Recent Episodes
Yaroslaw Bagriy
Lindsay Gibbs is the author of Power Plays, “No BS newsletter about sexism in sports.” Gibbs writes about the cultural and political context behind women’s sports. She was an early writer for Substack Pro, and has been building her newsletter for over a year.
Here, she shares her playbook for writing and growing a newsletter—while staying genuine, authentic, and marketing-free.
Walt Hickey is the author of Numlock News, a daily newsletter with tens of thousands of subscribers. Hickey started working in newsletters as a data journalist in 2014, before creating his own platform on Substack in 2018. Here, he shares his writing process, growth strategy, and more.
How do you make sure your emails aren't marked as spam? What causes your newsletter to go to the dreaded "promotions" tab? How can you fix it? Deliverability specialist Yanna-Torry Aspraki answers all of your email deliverability questions.
As you start to develop a monetization strategy for your newsletter, a question arises: What should you do with the money?
Once your newsletter generates revenue, you have a few options. You can file taxes on that income as a sole proprietor, or you can decide to file an LLC and create a business. This week, I asked Ryan Pitylak, the CMO of ZenBusiness, to answer questions about the paperwork behind the scenes of starting a newsletter business.
In last week’s panel on B2B media, I asked three experts for their advice on growing a newsletter. I spoke with Mark Stenberg, a media reporter for AdWeek and author of the newsletter Medialyte, Josh Kaplan, who previously helped scale Morning Brew and works with creators like Kinsey Grant and Colin & Samir to develop their brands, and Polina Marinova Pompliano, who writes the wildly popular newsletter The Profile. All three shared their top advice for newsletter writers.
Abena Anim-Somuah is the co-founder of Food Supply, a two-month old media upstart that includes a newsletter, Le Digestif, a digital cookbook of curated recipes, and coming soon, a community for culinary creators.
Here, Anim-Somuah shares her strategies for building a brand from scratch, developing digital communities in tandem with newsletters, and writing creatively.
When Tim Huelskamp launched his newsletter in 2017, he built a product he wanted for himself. As a busy professional working in venture capital, he wanted a comprehensive, unbiased roundup of the day’s news. It would cover all sorts of verticals, from sports and entertainment to science and foreign policy, all in one place. He named it 1440 after the year the printing press was invented, an homage to the idea that newsletters could freely and easily distribute information.
At first, the newsletter started with 78 subscribers, just friends and family of Huelskamp and his co-founder. Today, 1440 Media has over 700,000 subscribers with an open rate above 50 percent.
How did he do it? Here, Huelskamp shares his advice for entrepreneurs starting their own newsletter businesses, and the strategies he used to build the company.
Terrel Johnson started The Half Marathoner as a static directory of half marathon races more than 16 years ago. Today, he's turned The Half Marathoner into a weekly newsletter with more than 50,000 subscribers. Here, Terrel shares his writing process, his monetization strategies, and the long-term vision behind his newsletter.
Dana James is the writer of Black Iowa News, a newsletter focused on providing factual information and unique reporting for the Black community in Iowa. Here, James shares her perspective on writing and reporting news at the local level.
Claire Zulkey is a writer, journalist, and creator of the Evil Witches newsletter, a weekly newsletter about the trials and joys of family life. Zulkey covers everything from parenting advice to recommendations for storebought cookies. She launched her newsletter through a private Facebook group of friends and moms who wanted to share candidly about their experiences, and has since launched paid memberships.
Here, she shares her strategies for writing and growing her newsletter.
Christopher Sopher is the co-founder and CEO of Letterhead, a platform that offers business tools for newsletters. Sopher is also the co-founder of Whereby Us, a network of local newsletters across cities like Miami, Seattle, Portland, and Pittsburgh. Whereby Us is profitable and earns over $1.5 million in revenue per year.
When founding his first newsletter, the New Tropic in Miami in 2014, Sopher noticed a common complaint from his friends and neighbors: "I'm barraged by information, but I don't feel informed," he says. "What we recognized out of that was that there was this sense of community and belonging that people were really craving, and traditional, local news from the newspaper was not designed to do that. So we saw an opportunity to potentially make a contribution there."
In this episode, Sopher shares his strategies for developing newsletters, aligning relationships with advertisers to meet the needs of readers, and creating an authentic community through local news.
Yaro Bagriy, the founder of Newsletter Crew, shares the lessons he's learned from thousands of conversations with newsletter writers.
About this episode: Local newsletters are becoming the hottest rage in the newsletter world. This week I had the opportunity to discuss how to build a local newsletter with a local newsletter expert, Ryan Sneddon. In this episode, we discuss the opportunity of local newsletters, how they’re drastically different from the standard newsletter, how to build a successful local newsletter, and so much more.
Episode Sponsor: AWeber
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights: http://newslettercrew.com/ep47-building-a-local-newsletter-with-ryan-sneddon-of-naptown-scoop
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Ryan Sneddon: https://www.sneddymobbin.com/
- Naptown Scoop: https://www.naptownscoop.com/
About this episode: This week I sat down with Mare Dolle, a newsletter creator with over 4k subscribers who is also pushing the edge with newsletter innovations. In this episode, we talk about the unique types of monetization opening up for newsletters and also some of the unique ways newsletters are doing advertising. This episode is great for anyone interested in how newsletters will monetize in the future.
Episode Sponsor: AWeber
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights: https://newslettercrew.com/ep46-unique-ways-to-monetize-your-newsletter-with-marie-dolle-of-in-bed-with-social
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Marie Dolle: https://linktr.ee/Mariedolle
- In Bed with Social: https://maried.substack.com/
About this episode: This week I had the opportunity to sit down with Andrew Kamphey and Nii Ahene to talk about their recent newsletter acquisition they did. Nii has officially acquired Influence Weekly, a weekly newsletter on the Influencer Marketing industry. Andrew ran this newsletter for 3 years before Nii acquired it. And in this episode we’re going to dive deep into their story. It’s almost going to be a retrospective on this acquisition. This is a highly recommended episode for anyone that’s interested in ever selling their newsletter.
Episode Sponsor: AWeber
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights: http://newslettercrew.com/ep45-selling-a-newsletter-for-5-figures-with-andrew-kamphey-and-nii-ahene
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Andrew Kamphey: https://twitter.com/Kamphey
- Nii Ahene: https://twitter.com/Nii_Ahene
- Influence Weekly: http://influenceweekly.co/
- BetterSheets: https://bettersheets.co/
- Coffehouse: https://coffeehouse.substack.com/
About this episode: This week I had the pleasure to talk to a very interesting individual who knows a lot about newsletter sponsors, Pete Codes. Pete runs two newsletters with a total of 6k subscribers and is earning $1400 per month via sponsorships! In this episode, we’re going to dive into his method of achieving this awesome revenue milestone, how we can apply his methodology to our newsletters, and the mindset you’ll need to land high-paying sponsors consistently.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Be sure to check out Pete’s new course on how to monetize your newsletter. You can find it here.
We’re also onboarding newsletters for the newsletter referral program software we’re building. If interested in putting your newsletter on the best growth engine, then send an email to yaro@referralkit.co.
Episode Insights: https://newslettercrew.com/ep44-earning-1400-month-from-sponsorships-with-pete-codes-of-nocsdegree
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Pete Codes: https://www.petecodes.io/
- No CS Degree: https://twitter.com/nocsdegree
- No CS OK: https://nocsok.com/
- Remote Companies: https://remotecompanies.co/
About this episode: This week we have Ryan Sager and Jesse Watkins from Email Revenue Solutions. These two are the experts on newsletter sponsorships. In this episode, we’re going to discuss the secrets to finding newsletter sponsors, how to increase sponsor fill rates, how to price newsletter sponsors, and when to increase prices.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
We’re also onboarding newsletters for the newsletter referral program software we’re building. If interested in putting your newsletter on the best growth engine, then send an email to yaro@referralkit.co.
If you’re interested in the WhoSponsorsStuff discount then check out this link https://www.whosponsorsstuff.com/special-offer/. Ryan and Jesse are providing listeners of the Newsletter Crew a 20% discount off their plan. Use the discount code newslettercrew20.
Show Notes & Insights: https://newslettercrew.com/ep43-secrets-to-finding-newsletter-sponsors-with-ryan-sagar-jesse-of-email-revenue-solutions
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Ryan Sager: https://twitter.com/ryansager
- Newspackr: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/newspackr
- Email Revenue Solutions: https://www.emailrevenuesolutions.com/
- WhoSponsorsStuff: https://www.whosponsorsstuff.com/special-offer/ (newslettercrew20 for 20% discount)
About this episode: This week we have Caroline Porter & Joseph Lichterman, two successful newsletter creators and journalists who, with their friend Emily Roseman, are running a course called Newsletter Strategies for Journalists: How to Create, Grow & Monetize Newsletters. In this episode we're going to discuss how to find the right monetization strategy for your newsletter, growth tips, and their thoughts on Substack.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
How to Monetize Your Newsletter: https://newslettercrew.com/how-to-monetize-your-newsletter/
We’re also onboarding newsletters for the newsletter referral program software we’re building. If interested in putting your newsletter on the best growth engine, then send an email to yaro@referralkit.co.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Joseph Lichterman: https://twitter.com/ylichterman
- Solution Set: http://solutionset.org/
- Caroline Porter: https://carolineporter.org/
- Unpacking: https://unpacking.substack.com/
Newsletter Strategies for Journalists: How to Create, Grow & Monetize Newsletters: https://journalismcourses.org/course/newsletter-strategies-for-journalists-how-to-create-grow-monetize-newsletters/
Show Notes: https://newslettercrew.com/ep-42-monetizing-and-growing-your-newsletter-with-caroline-porter-joseph-lichterman
About this episode: This week we have Chris Berry, who is one of the co-founders of BrandStreet. A community for brand builders. Ari Lewis, who was on episode 11, is also one of the co-founders. In this episode, Chris answers why branding is important for newsletters, how does a newsletter go about building a brand, when you know when you've started to build a successful brand, and much more.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Substack vs. Revue: https://newslettercrew.com/substack-vs-revue/
If you're interested in hooking up your newsletter to the best growth engine then you'll be interested in Newsletter Crews own referral program software. We're currently onboarding newsletters so if you're interested then send an email to yaro@referralkit.co. Put your newsletter growth on auto
Show Notes & Insights:
- When you're building a brand for your newsletter it's important to find what your niche is. What makes your newsletter unique.
- Your brand will help convey to potential subscribers what exactly they will get when they subscribe.
- Building a brand starts with your authentic voice.
- Your branding should be consistent across your newsletter, landing page, Twitter, Instagram, etc. These are all avenues to convey your brand.
- Branding provides one of the best moats for your newsletter. Someone can copy the content but they can't copy your brand.
- Voice is just one aspect of your newsletter's brand. The visuals of the newsletter is another important aspect. This could mean the use or absence of GIFS, emojis, pictures, the color scheme etc, the layout, etc. All of it plays into your branding.
- Subscriber amount and open rates are one of the metrics on if your brand is developing well. But the most interesting thing is when it comes to brands is the feedback you receive from your subscribers. Do they feel passionate about your newsletter?
- Building a brand is as much metrics as it is an art.
- When running a newsletter you're always sending. Receiving feedback and responses from your subscribers is just as important.
- When you're beginning your newsletter, brand can be replaced with professionalism. That doesn't mean it needs to look perfect, but you should put in time into it. There are some basic things you can put into that conveys professionalism.
- The most iconic brands are backed up by individual people.
- For many solo newsletter writers, your brand is your newsletter and your newsletter is your brand.
- Substack makes it really easy to start a newsletter. One problem is with the visual branding. A Substack newsletter looks the same as every other Substack newsletter. It's hard to visual design and brand your newsletter with Substack.
- For everyone on Substack, you need to audit yourself and see if you can live with their limitations. Is having the same feel as everyone else OK with you and your newsletter's brand?
- Paid subscriptions, sponsorship, and an acquisition channel for your services are all valid and great avenues to earn an amazing living on the internet. But all of these have different models and scale for success.
- Highlighting and shouting out other people in your newsletter is a proven method to grow your newsletter and it's brand. First, it incentivizes others to share your newsletter since they want to show everyone they were mentioned. Second, it helps increase open rates since subscribers want to see if they were mentioned. The more people you're able to publish into it, the better.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Chris Berry: https://twitter.com/ChrisBerryOH
- BrandStreet: https://www.brandstreet.co/
About this episode: This week we have Corey Quinn, who runs a successful newsletter with over 20k subscribers called Last Week in AWS. In this episode we're going to dive deep into his newsletter referral program. Why he started it, the growth that he's been seeing, and how he went about architecting the referral rewards.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Guide on Collecting Feedback for your Newsletter: https://newslettercrew.com/collect-newsletter-feedback/
This is part 1 of the episode and part 2 has the second half of the call. If you’re interested in part 2, then become a member of the Newsletter Crew.
If you're interested in hooking up your newsletter to the best growth engine then you'll be interested in Newsletter Crews' own referral program software. We're currently onboarding newsletters so if you're interested then send an email to yaro@referralkit.co. Put your newsletter growth on auto
Show Notes & Insights: https://newslettercrew.com/ep40-referral-program-deep-dive-with-corey-quinn-of-last-week-in-aws/
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Corey Quinn: https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig
- Last Week in AWS: https://www.lastweekinaws.com/
About this episode: This week we have Sam Parr, the founder of The Hustle, a massively successful newsletter with over 1 million subscribers. In this episode, we're diving deep on The Hustle's main growth channels, how The Hustle got its first 150k subscribers, how Sam would grow a newsletter to 1 million subscribers today, optimizing the overlooked parts of your newsletter, and so much more.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
8 Quick Tips to Double Your Newsletter Landing Page Conversion Rate: https://newslettercrew.com/8-quick-tips-to-double-your-newsletter-landing-page-conversion-rate/
This is part 1 of the episode and part 2 has the second half of the call. If you’re interested in part 2, then become a member of the Newsletter Crew.
We're also announcing that we are launching our very own newsletter referral software, just like The Hustle uses for massive growth in their newsletter. So if you're interested in growing your newsletter effectively with less effort, then send an email to yaro@referralkit.co to get on the list.
Show Notes & Insights:
- Sam Parr's main growth channel was blogging and making it viral. Putting out viral and controversial topics with click-worth headlines lead to millions of page views. Naturally a small percentage of those visitors subscribed to The Hustle.
- After you've reached 100k+ subscribers paid marketing will be one of the main growth channels for your newsletter.
- Finding profitable acquisition channels for your newsletter is the key to massive newsletter growth. To do this, you'll need every metric you can get. Subscriber acquisition cost, landing page conversions, subscriber lifetime value, etc.
- You don't need to be an SEO master to create a popular massive newsletter. All you need to do is get as many people to your landing page as possible. That could be through anything!
- If you're going to post a blog on Reddit or any community, you must provide value first before plugging in your newsletter. Even then there will be times where it will backfire and get you banned. That's the nature of some of these online communities.
- More show notes here
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Sam Parr: https://twitter.com/theSamParr
- The Hustle: https://thehustle.co/
About this episode: A few months ago I had the pleasure of meeting Blake Ellison on Twitter. He mentioned he runs an analytics service called Analysts Now and actually helped Kevin Conti, who was on episode 31, grow to over $10k MRR with his newsletter Softwareideas. I got Blake and a member of the Newsletter Crew community, Stefan from Alternative Assets, to hop on a call and analyze Stefan’s newsletter.
This is part 1 of the episode and part 2 has the second half of the call. If you’re interested in part 2, then become a member of the Newsletter Crew.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Guide on Collecting Feedback for your Newsletter: https://newslettercrew.com/collect-newsletter-feedback/
Show Notes & Insights:
- Analytics give you clarity to what's working with your newsletter and what's not.
- Paid newsletter ads can provide a solid stream of traffic to your newsletter.
- There 3 major phases of a business when going from small to big. The indie phase, product-market-fit phase, and the scaling phase.
- The indie phase is when you're just getting the business of the ground. You still don't know if it's viable or if there's even a market for this offering. The work is more qualitative than quantitative.
- Newsletter-market-fit is when your content resonates with your audience. The engagement is high! Your open-rates and click-rates are higher than the standard.
- Try cleaning out 1% of your newsletter per week. The bottom 1% that is the least engaged.
- It takes roughly 6-9 months to see SEO start to pay off.
- Once you have a solid number on how much revenue a subscriber brings your newsletter, then you can really start paid advertising.
- As your newsletter grows expect a decrease in open-rates, click-rates, visitor-to-subscriber conversion, and overall engagement.
- Frankenstein numbers will get the job done as long as you're using a consistent measure across time. That at least gives you an indication of how well your newsletter is doing. It at least gives you a directional indication as a signal on what's going on and what you should look into.
- SEO should be a second or third traffic source in your growth toolbox. Don't go straight to SEO out of the gate.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Blake Ellison: https://twitter.com/blakerson
- Analysts Now: https://analystsnow.com/
- Stefan Von Imhof: https://twitter.com/stefanvonimhof
- Alternative Assets: https://alternativeassets.substack.com/
About this episode: In this episode, I have the pleasure of talking with one of the most successful newsletter creators. Maximillian Rofagha of Finimize. Finimize has over 1 million subscribers and has expanded into a community and mobile app. We'll be discussing the best growth channels for your newsletter from 0 to 1k, 1k to 10k, and 10k to 100k subscribers. We're also going to dive into Finnimize's newsletter format and why Maximillian chose to structure in that fashion.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
The Ultimate Guide & List of Newsletter Directories: https://newslettercrew.com/list-of-newsletter-directories/
Show Notes & Insights:
- There's no silver bullet to newsletter growth. It's always a combination of multiple avenues and strategies. Find the strategies that work well for your newsletter by experimenting.
- As you grow your newsletter, certain growth avenues will work better than others.
- Great content will lead to great word-of-mouth growth.
- Friends, family, and professional network should always be the first channel for growth. It'll get you your first subsriber and maybe even your thousandth subscriber.
- Growth Steps: Friends, family, professional network -> Featured in blogs -> Product Hunt/Community posting -> Referral program/Word of mouth -> Campus ambassador program -> Cross-promotions
- As your newsletter starts gaining traction start reaching out to blogs for cross-promotion. Have them feature your newsletter. It'll help give your newsletter passive growth as well as added SEO via a backlink from that blog.
- One really easy and desired referral reward is a special weekend newsletter edition.
- Cross-promotions can provide massive results if you find the right partners. Make sure there's customer-market-fit with who you're cross-promoting.
- You can get to 1+ million subscribers without spending any money.
- Growth from 0 to 1k subscribers is all about manual growth work. Reaching out to blogs, influences, Quora, Reddit, etc. Do what's unscalable.
- If you have more of a general newsletter, then a campus ambassador program could provide solid results.
- As your newsletter grows and matures, layering on and compounding different growth channels will get you to that next milestone.
- The subscribers you onboard with an ambassador program are higher quality compared to some other channels.
- Doing the unscaleable growth tasks will start compounding.
- An ambassador program can work with a niche newsletter but you'll need to think about where that audience frequents. That could be at specific conferences, Meetup groups, etc.
- Subscribe to newsletters within a certain niche, find what you don't like about it (could be format, content, etc) then create your own and fix those problems.
- The format of your newsletter plays a huge role in how sticky it will be and if readers will continue to subscribe and engage with it.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Maximilian Rofagha: https://twitter.com/wholeearthweb
- Finimize: https://www.finimize.com/
About this episode: This week we have Ernie Smith, a veteran in the newsletter space. Ernie has been running his newsletter Tedium for over six years and is also the founder of the Newsletter Nerds Facebook group. In this episode, we discuss what makes a newsletter successful, his newsletter tech stack, and the future of newsletters.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (25% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
What is a DKIM record?: https://newslettercrew.com/what-is-a-dkim-record/
Show Notes & Insights:
- A successful newsletter has a good sense of it's own identity. You know what you're going to get when you read it.
- A newsletter is one of those mediums where you can mold it to whatever makes sense for your audience. There isn't one successful structure or type of newsletter.
- Over the years of running your newsletter, your tech stack will change and mold to what you need. Don't be afraid to switch when you need to.
- The best email service provider for any newsletter is the one that makes the most sense for your newsletter.
- How hands-on do you want to be with the tech of your newsletter? That should be a critical point in choosing the right ESP.
- The scope of a newsletter is the big difference compared to a traditional publication.
- There haven't been many improvements to email or reading email 5 years ago. For example, the process of writing emails still requires the use of tables, which is really resource-heavy code wise.
- There is still room for newsletters and there's still room for newsletters to evolve.
- Newsletters aren't going anywhere and will keep becoming more and more popular as the creator economy booms.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Ernie Smith: https://twitter.com/ShortFormErnie
- Tedium: https://tedium.co/
- Newsletter Nerds: https://www.facebook.com/groups/NewsletterNerds
Other Resources:
- The State of Email Design Stinks
About this episode: This week we have Nick Frost, the expert on newsletter directories. Nick runs two of the most popular newsletter directories, newsletters.co and inboxstash.com. We've been hearing a lot of questions about what newsletter directories are, what they're used for, why you should submit to them, and what benefits they provide. So we wanted to bring Nick on and have him answer them all.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (25% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew ProductHunt Launch: Click here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
How to Use Your Unsubscribe Page to Win Back Subscribers: https://newslettercrew.com/how-to-use-your-unsubscribe-page-to-win-back-subscribers/
Show Notes & Insights:
- A newsletter directory is a curated list or user-submitted list of newsletters with tags or categories to filter them. The newsletters directory could focus on one niche or many.
- For the reader, a newsletter directory serves one purpose. To help find them newsletters to subscribe to.
- For a newsletter, the main purpose a newsletter directory serves is to provide a platform to have it be discovered.
- Publish your newsletters to all available newsletter directories.
- Newsletter directories are all about casting a wide net. Get you newsletter on as many as possible to have the biggest reach possible.
- Every newsletter directory your newsletter is listed on will give you a backlink to your newsletter.
- Newsletter directories provide an amazing passive growth channel for your newsletter.
- The amount of subscribers a newsletter directory could bring comes down to the strength of the newsletter directory itself and also how well you describe it.
- Expect about 10-20 new subscribers the first week you submit to a newsletter directory. But as a newsletter directories, authority grows growth picks up for all newsletters.
- As time goes on it's going to get harder and harder for a newsletter to reach 100k subscribers.
- When you're launching your newsletter, take it seriously. Have a checklist. Make submitting your newsletter to newsletter directories a serious step that you don't take lightly. Prepare for it.
- Take submitting your newsletter to a newsletter directory as serious as launching on Product Hunt.
- Be sure to prepare when submitting your newsletter to any newsletter directory. Many are different. InboxStash has a much more in-depth submission form that you can take advantage of when submitting.
- Don't just copy your header and subheader from your landing page and use that as the description when submitting to a newsletter directory. Spend 30 minutes really thinking about how to summarize your newsletter so potential visitors are more convinced to subscribe.
- When you're submitting your newsletter to any newsletter directory, describe it like no-one knows what it is. Most visitors probably don't.
- Newsletter directory submission checklist: Make sure you have a solid logo, 1-2 paragraphs explaining what your newsletter is and why it's beneficial to subscribe and make sure the headline is relevant to your newsletter. All of this goes into the SEO of the listing.
- The main goal of a newsletter directory in the newsletter's eyes is to get you more subscribers.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Nick Frost: https://nickfrost.org/
- Newsletters: https://www.newsletters.co/
- InboxStash: https://inboxstash.com/
About this episode: This week we have Codie Sanchez, a successful newsletter creator who runs multiple newsletters. Her most popular being Contrarian Thinking, which currently has over 100k subscribers. In this episode, we're going to discuss the exact steps she took to get her newsletter from 0 to 50k subscribers and how you can go from 0 to 10k subscribers in 30 days.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Getting your newsletter in front of an audience: https://newslettercrew.com/getting-your-newsletter-in-front-of-an-audience/
Show Notes & Insights:
- If you're looking to grow your newsletter quickly, start by joining every community there is that's related to your niche. Provide massive value and then pitch them your newsletter.
- Leverage other people's audiences to build your own.
- Add a lot of value in the posts where you're sharing your newsletter. Make it a no-brainer to join. Use the post as the reason why they should subscribe.
- Long-form posts with a catchy one-liner at the beginning will see much better results in growing your newsletter. The reason this works is that the 30-seconds you took from them to read your posts, you given them 300x the value.
- Get a little bit of momentum before you start adding a referral program to your newsletter.
- Momentum for your newsletter is easy to continue but hard to start.
- The hardest part is actually creating the newsletter and sticking to it.
- As a newsletter creator, make yourself visible. Be guests on podcasts, provide value through Twitter, post valuable content in communities. Get the word out!
- Lead with value.
- Getting to 10k subscribers is not easy but it's simple.
- When you're starting your newsletter, reach out to everyone you know. Everyone! Facebook friends, email contacts, phone contacts, LinkedIn. When you reach out to them make it specific why it'd be beneficial to them.
- Spend 2 solid hours a week growth hacking your newsletter.
- You can either be the expert and share your expertise. Or you can share your journey. Either way, you have authenticity.
- After you've exhausted your personal network and communities to grow your newsletter, start hitting up cross-promotions. Start with people at your same level, then bump it up. After cross-promotions start with podcasts and other media.
- Newsletters don't do enough growth-hacking. Even if you only want to be content-focused, it's still important to the market. Don't feel bad about having some hustle associated with your newsletter.
- Spend as much time you do marketing your newsletter as you do writing it.
- Great content won't be enough to really grow your newsletter. Great content is just a baseline.
- Owning a newsletter is one of the best ways to meet amazing new people.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Codie Sanchez: https://www.codiesanchez.com/#intro
- Contrarian Thinking: https://contrarianthinking.substack.com/
- Grow Getters: https://growgetters.substack.com/
Other Resources:
- Social Dilemma + How I Got My First 10,000+ Subscribers in 30 Days
About this episode: This week we have Simon Owens, a successful independent journalist running a paid newsletter on Substack. Simon also runs a popular podcast called The Business of Content, which is about how publishers create, distribute, and monetize digital content. In this episode we're going to dive into the pluses and minuses of publishing on Substack and when it makes sense to switch. We're also going to dive into the paid newsletter best practices and Simons weekly newsletter workflow.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
What is an SPF record?: https://newslettercrew.com/what-is-an-spf-record/
Show Notes & Insights:
- If you're running a paid newsletter on Substack, it will eventually make sense to move off of it. The cut they're taking will eventually be significant enough. Why pay 10% to them when you could use that money to hire sometime?
- If you're not technical and starting on Substack, it will also make sense to move off and use that 10% to hire someone to implement a cheaper tech stack for you. There are many options out there.
- Use a service like Substack or Revue if you don't want to think about tech problems for more than 5 seconds per week.
- The hardest part, other than getting someone to hand over their money when running a paid newsletter is the consistency. Paid newsletters are now bound to an official schedule for their paying subscribers. You can't skip an issue. They expect it.
- If you're looking to start a paid subscription newsletter, start with a free version first. Flush it out and get traction with it. Then go paid.
- What your newsletter is when you send out the 1st issue will not be the same when you send out your 100th issue.
- Don't underestimate the time it takes to understand what is the value proposition of your paid newsletter.
- The most optimistic projections on your paid newsletter won't pan out. Plan for that.
- A solid weekly plan will decrease the time it takes to send your newsletter.
- If you're sending out evergreen newsletters on a consistent basis, try and write as many as possible now. This will give you some cushion room if anything happens.
- If you're a solo paid newsletter creator. Most of the subscribers are investing in you. They are rooting for you to succeed.
- A podcast is an intimate form of communication that helps convert free subscribers to paid subscribers.
- Encourage your free and paid newsletter subscribers to be evangelizing on your behalf.
- Get your superfans to become your own personal marketing team.
- Try leveraging paid Twitter ads and note the ROI on that channel. It's a low-cost investment that could pay off huge.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Simon Owens: http://www.simonowens.net/
- Simon Owen’s Tech and Media Newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
About this episode: This week we have John Saddington who's been running newsletters for over 10 years now. John is currently running his newest newsletter called Yen.fm, a daily newsletter for community-minded professionals. I wanted to bring him on the podcast because he wrote a really interesting deep dive called Build, Test, and Launch an Email Newsletter From Scratch. In that deep dive, there's a section on how to build a publication workflow that won’t burn you out. So in this podcast, we're going to dive deep into this workflow to help you in your newsletter journey. We're also going to talk about the writing process changes over the years.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Inside the Tech of a Paid Newsletter: https://newslettercrew.com/inside-the-tech-of-a-paid-newsletter/
Show Notes & Insights:
- The biggest difference between a newsletter and just writing is that a newsletter is writing on a schedule.
- Everyone's first few newsletters will be bad. So don't wait, just get them out. Now it's only up from there.
- If you want to start writing a daily newsletter. First, start with a weekly newsletter. If you can't do that, then this isn't serious enough for you.
- Live and die by your newsletter deadline.
- Commit to a schedule. Pick a day and hour that you will actually send the newsletter. Pick a day and hour to actually sit down and write it.
- Schedule at least 40-60 minutes to write your newsletter. Don't be aggressive with the time needed here. You'll spend a lot more time formatting and with technical issues too. Schedule time for the whole process.
- Spend at least 4 weeks writing to really see if you're into writing that specific newsletter.
- Technologies come and go. Always have a backup plan or self-host your landing pages, etc.
- Your writing personality will change as you write your newsletter throughout the years.
- If you're distinctly a writer, the moment you get to a place you're comfortable it'll be very uncomfortable since you'll realize there is more to learn. You're never done as a writer.
- Take your newsletter seriously. This should be something you're serious about. Change the schedule to fit around your newsletter, not the other way around. There are real trade-offs.
- A newsletter can really transform your life and your business.
- It's absolutely magical to build real relationships with your newsletter readers. You may never meet them physically, but the relationships develop.
- Now is the best time to start a newsletter. The tools can never be cheaper, even free! But ultimately in the end it's up to you to actually do it.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- John Saddington: https://john.do/
- Yen.fm: https://yen.fm
Other Resources:
- Build, Test, and Launch an Email Newsletter From Scratch: https://yen.fm/build-newsletter/
About this episode: This week we have Kevin Conti of Softwareideas.io, a newsletter that's generating over $8000 in MRR in just over 4-months. Software Ideas is a newsletter that sends you hand-picked, validated SaaS ideas every week. On this episode, we're going to cover how Kevin was able to get this newsletter to $8000 MRR, his newsletter pre-sale strategy, and the unique metrics he was tracking during his pre-sale to verify his idea was going to be profitable. We're also going to cover how he's dealing with plagiarism with his newsletter.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
How to Price a Paid Subscription Newsletter: https://newslettercrew.com/how-to-price-a-paid-subscription-newsletter/
Show Notes & Insights:
- If you're looking to start a paid newsletter, write a couple of free newsletters that you can post on different channels (IndieHackers, Reddit, Slack groups, Discord groups, etc). At the bottom of these posts simply mention that if you'd like to get another free newsletter and possibly paying for it in the future to reach out to you via email. The main point of this strategy is to qualify how many people out there would be willing to pay for your newsletter.
- If you're going to be doing pre-sale of your paid newsletter, don't worry too much about the actual pre-sale revenue amount. Focus more on the conversion rate of qualified leads versus who actually pays.
- If your pre-sale goal is $500 and you reach it, it doesn't necessarily mean you've validated your idea. Look at the conversion rate. What if you had to reach out to 10k people to get that $500? What if it was only 100? Conversion rate matters more than pre-sale revenue.
- Before you start your newsletter presale, make an educated guess on the conversion rate you think you're going to expect.
- Before you start a paid newsletter, validate the idea. How many people are interested enough to pay for it before your first paid issue.
- There is no golden conversion rate. Every newsletter niche will have different paid conversion rates. One important thing to consider is if it's sustainable for you. You can extrapolate based on the pre-sales and figure out how many people you need to reach out to per-day to make it worthwhile. Does the number seem sustainable?
- Free newsletters and paid newsletters are completely different. Paid newsletters must provide value. What is the value your paid newsletter provides?
- Distribution channels are key for a successful paid newsletter. It's going to be very difficult to run a successful paid newsletter with solid distribution channels.
- Don't worry too much about plagiarism since they probably don't have the level of experience or depth of research as you do.
- Ideas to increase the value of your paid newsletter offering: provide discount codes for relevant services, give access to a knowledge base, give access to a private forum or chat, or develop relevant courses.
- Cross-promotion might not be the best growth channel for a paid newsletters since your subscribers are already paying you. It might come off the wrong way by having advertising.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Kevin Conti: https://www.kevinconti.com/
- Software Ideas: https://softwareideas.io/
Other Resources:
- Software Ideas Baremetrics: https://softwareideas.baremetrics.com/
- Anonymized Customer Interviews: https://www.notion.so/Anonymized-Customer-Interviews-57efa80703704bd6b8739250610a89a0
About this episode: On this episode, we have Alex Hillman from stackingthebricks.com. Alex is an expert in email lists and newsletters. We'll dive into some interesting topics such as the common misconceptions with email lists and a type of newsletter called evergreen newsletters, which is essentially a fully automated newsletter.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
How to Name Your Newsletter: https://newslettercrew.com/how-to-name-your-newsletter/
Show Notes & Insights:
- You don't need a huge email list to start selling your products to it.
- Is the money meaningful or the feedback from your email list that there are people willing to buy products for you more meaningful?
- It's not about launch day sales, but the ability to continually sell to your email list.
- Having a product will only increase the rate of growth of your email list.
- Empires are built one subscriber at a time.
- One interesting idea on how to generate momentum for your product is with a pre-sale. But not just the standard way by blasting your email list, but by telling people to email you first.
- Encourage folks to reply to your newsletter when you're pre-selling your product or feeling out your audience to see if they'd be interested in purchasing. That extra step will really give you the needed feedback to know if you should go through with it.
- If you're automating your newsletter from the very beginning, you're probably making a few mistakes because you don't know if what you're automating actually works.
- Don't start thinking about automation until you have at least 12-24 evergreen newsletters written.
- There's nothing wrong with resending an evergreen newsletter from the past to your audience today. Your past subscribers have probably already forgotten about it and the newer subscribers would benefit from it being created since you know it was successful in the past.
- Great evergreen newsletter issues are valuable in the past, present, and future.
- Evergreen newsletters are scoped to the reader and all about the reader's experience. The reader doesn't care when it was sent, they just care how it's helping them today.
- If the newsletters you are writing were valuable to your subscribers at one point, then you can bet that they will be valuable to your subscribers at a later point.
- Why not reuse newsletters that were received well at the beginning of your newsletter journey to your audience that has grown hundreds or even thousands of more subscribers?
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Alex Hillman: https://twitter.com/alexhillman
- Stacking the Bricks: https://stackingthebricks.com/
- Tiny MBA: https://stackingthebricks.com/tinymba/
About this episode: On this episode, we have the talented Anne-Laure Le Cunff. She runs a newsletter called Maker Mind that currently has over 20k subscribers. We'll cover topics like lead magnets, monetization, sponsorships, affiliates, growing to 20k subscribers and more!
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
How To Improve Your Newsletter Welcome Emails: https://newslettercrew.com/improve-your-newsletter-welcome-emails/
Show Notes & Insights:
- Many newsletters that are part of a bigger company or personal brand would benefit from naming their newsletter something different. This opens up the possibility of launching multiple newsletters under the same umbrella.
- To see consistent growth you must be consistent and promote it on every channel that makes sense.
- Promote your content systematically.
- If you are consistently creating great newsletter content others will inevitably promote it for you.
- If you're looking to increase landing-page subscribe conversion then offer a lead-magnet as an incentive to subscribe.
- The more traffic the better, if you're not able to convert anyone to subscribe then it's wasted.
- The quality of subscriber may not be as high with a lead magnet than without.
- The biggest problem with lead magnets is individuals subscribing solely for the lead management. They may unsubscribe right after or never open another email after.
- Lead magnets aren't a magic bullet. It will increase conversions but don't rely on it solely for growth.
- Being highly-selective with the sponsors will keep the trust between you and your subscribers.
- Sponsors help a newsletter stay free. It's a win-win-win approach.
- Every newsletter is unique. Really think through if sponsorship is right for your newsletter.
- Don't wait until you're in front of your screen to start writing your long-form content newsletter. Constantly be thinking about and writing down ideas for it.
- Keep on showing up, keep consistent, keep providing value and you will see an impact on growth and engagement.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Anne-Laure Le Cunff: https://anne-laure.net/
- Ness Labs: https://nesslabs.com/
About this episode: In this episode, we have Peter Cooper, the god-father of newsletters according to Chris Osborne. Peter runs over 10 newsletters, so we're going to discuss how he's managing a newsletter empire. We'll also discuss how your newsletter can survive in the long term.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Winning at Deliverability: https://newslettercrew.com/winning-at-deliverability/
Show Notes & Insights:
- If you're running a newsletter and are looking to start another. Find a topic that's ancillary to your main newsletter. You'll have a lot of overlapping audiences that can give you an amazing boost at the beginning.
- Newsletters are just a better way with connecting to your audience.
- Over the last 10 years, there has been fatigue with other online formats (blogs, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc). Newsletters fell out of style, but are coming back due to this fatigue.
- A newsletter can't just run that same format forever. There needs to be some sort of changing or shaking up of the format. Pay attention to what's happening out there to know where to take your newsletter next.
- Your newsletter has a higher chance of dying from you losing motivation than from you losing too many subscribers.
- Keep iterating on your newsletter. If you love the topic you're writing about, you'll keep making it better and better every week.
- Outsource the parts of the newsletter you're not good at. Double-down on what you are good at.
- If you have glaring weaknesses and the business case to support it, absolutely hire out someone to take that part over.
- Quality isn't necessarily a big indicator of success in a newsletter.
- If you can't get sponsors, try implementing a classified ad system. Podnews.net does this really well.
- It's worth experimenting with very specific targeted paid ads to grow your subscribers.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Peter Cooper: https://cooperpress.com/
- JavaScript Weekly: https://javascriptweekly.com/
About this episode: In this episode, we have Steph Smith, who's a part of one of the most successful newsletters The Hustle and Trends, which is read by millions of subscribers. We'll talk about some interesting topics such as the secret to creating a successful newsletter and how The Hustle went about pricing their subscription newsletter and community called Trends.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Newsletter Story of the Week: https://www.axios.com/insider-inc-buys-majority-stake-morning-brew-e6ec0673-4354-4bc7-9feb-e0b149508c9a.html
Show Notes & Insights:
- A newsletter business has very high margins while also providing emense scaling potential.
- Email is probably the only channel where you control while also having direct connection with your audience.
- Many newsletter creators misunderstand the difference between a niche audience and a niche value proposition.
- Your newsletter just needs to be 1% better on one specific thing compared to the other newsletters out there. But it has to be something people care about.
- Newsletters can trade on quality, depth of research, quality of information, trustworthiness, humor, entertainment value, costs, etc.
- Clarity is the most important part about running a newsletter.
- Many creators are starting newsletters because they think it's easy and they it'll just happen. That's certainly not the case. It's never been easier to start a newsletter but that doesn't make it easy to create a successful newsletter.
- If you want to start a newsletter, ask yourself this. Are you going to be providing any unique value or solving a unique problem for people?
- Since it's never been easier to start a newsletter, the percentage of high quality newsletters is much lower now.
- There's a ceiling on how much someone will pay to be a sponsor of your newsletter even if it does 5x or 10x. At some point, it's just too much.
- Now that there's too much information, people are willing to pay for something that's high quality.
- Try beta testing different subscription price points to really understand how much someone is willing to pay for what you're offering.
- Many creators are underpricing their products because they're not used to charging for it.
- The price of your newsletter or membership should be based on what you audiences wallet says. Don't overthink it too much internally.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Steph Smith: https://stephsmith.io/, https://twitter.com/stephsmithio
- Doing Content Right: https://gumroad.com/l/doing-content-right
- The Hustle: https://thehustle.co/
About this episode: In this episode, we gathered a few members from the Newsletter Crew community to discuss the problems with building on Substack. Now it won't be an hour of straight bashing but a conversation about who's it really built and the pitfalls newsletter creators can fall into when using it.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
The Most Popular Paid Subscription Newsletters: https://newslettercrew.com/the-most-popular-paid-subscriptionnewsletters/
Show Notes & Insights:
- Many creators leverage Substacks authority as a newsletter platform to grow their subscriber base.
- Substack will eventually need to go to a SaaS model since many newsletter creators are realizing that they should do all of their free stuff on Substack then move off of it when they start earning revenue.
- Substack subdomains will kill your newsletter's SEO.
- Substack still in a way owns your content. You're hosting it with them, thus it's affected by any of their changes.
- Anything you want to rank, put it on your root domain. Put your Substack on a subdomain for your newsletter. Thus you get the best of both worlds.
- Substacks discoverability has been an issue since they're more inclined to promote their paid publications versus the free ones due to the incremental income they would generate.
- Newsletters might not be the best medium to provide a paid product.
- The standard progression: Free newsletter -> paid newsletter -> paid community -> something even more.
- The real moat isn't your newsletter content, it's the community you build.
- There's been a lot of plagiarism going around within the newsletter world, thus building a community as a moat is a very good idea. Unless your moat is your own opinion.
- If you're running a curation based newsletter, you should watch out for some of the newer software services out there that curate for you.
- As a newsletter creator, you need to figure out how to keep adding more and more value.
- Not enough newsletter creators ask their power users what the value they are actually getting from the newsletter.
- You should always be asking yourself, what can you provide that no-one else can.
- Direct to consumer is a trend that's here to stay and newsletters are just the start of it.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Ray Daly: https://reading.email/
- Kevin Indig: https://www.kevin-indig.com/
- Richard Patey: https://website.investing.io/
About this episode: This week we're speaking to Isaac Saul, who is running an $80k/year Substack newsletter called Tangle. In this episode, we'll discuss Isaac’s radically different philosophy of free versus paid newsletter offerings, how Isaac decided to start a paid newsletter, what his plans are with his newsletter after the election, and much more.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Newsletter Story of the Week: https://blog.substack.com/p/new-add-a-custom-domain-to-your-substack
Show Notes & Insights:
- Listen to your subscribers, understand what they want to want. This will improve retention while also increasing subscriber loyalty.
- If you're looking to do a subscription-based newsletter, start with a free newsletter first. Give value, build loyalty, ask what is it they want. Then start asking how much they would pay for it. Let the free list drive the paid offering.
- Before you move to a paid subscription model, first prove someone is willing to pay for it by either adding a Patreon link, buy me a coffee, etc.
- Waiting for someone to actually give you money for your free newsletter is a very good indication a paid newsletter will be successful.
- Run a survey and ask your subscribers how much they would pay for this. Once you have a good spectrum, shoot for somewhere in the lower-middle to incentive the subscribers who didn't want to pay too much.
- If you're running a paid newsletter with only a yearly option, wait until the next cycle and see how the churn is before quitting your job.
- You must know your readers intimately to succeed with a paid newsletter.
- Sending out more free newsletters isn't a bad thing. It just means you'll have that many more opportunities to convert them to paid.
- Consider creating a "founder members" paid tier where you are radically transparent about the business. Price it much higher than the other subscriptions. This will help you connect with the fans that want to get a special inside look at how the business runs.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Isaac Saul: https://twitter.com/Ike_Saul
- Tangle: https://tangle.substack.com/
About this episode: In today's episode, we have 3 amazing guests from the Newsletter Crew community. Our first guest is Chris Osborne who was on episode 7 and has 4 newsletter acquisitions under his belt. He's definitely the guy I look up to when it comes to selling your newsletter. Our second guest is Ivy Lee the founder of LetterXchange.com, an online marketplace for buying newsletters. LetterXchange has been really pushing the bounds on newsletter evaluations. Our final guest is Jonas the founder of Duuce.com, another amazing marketplace that connects newsletter sellers and buyers. These 3 are some of the most well-versed people within the newsletter valuation space currently and I'm excited to have them on the show.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Typical Formats for Newsletters
Show Notes & Insights:
- When you go about selling your newsletter, you can't price it simply based on the subscriber count, revenue, and open rate. There's so much more than goes into it. Take into account the amount of time you spent on the format of the newsletter. Take into account the years of experience you have in a certain niche to come up with that rock-solid idea.
- Sell your newsletter for what you think it's worth. Find a buyer who values it as much as you do. They'll take care of it much better.
- Sell your newsletter for a price that you wouldn't regret a year from now if you had the time, energy, or dedication to keep with it.
- Your domain, growth projection, and the niche of your newsletter all should go into pricing the newsletter. Catchy domain, high growth, and profitable niche all command a higher price.
- If your newsletter is generating substantial revenue then you can price your newsletter with a discounted cash-flow model or other various standard newsletter models.
- For pre-revenue newsletters, the niche and domain are very important in deriving a fair-price for it.
- Understand why the buyer is interested in purchasing your newsletter. Known this is crucial in being able to find the right price. Price it at what they think it's worth. If they're really interested in getting into the niche your newsletter covers, perhaps they're willing to give a bit extra cash for it.
- If you're pre-revenue your audience growth, engagement and niche are super important when pricing your newsletter for sale. That essentially means you don't need to go from 0 to 1 in terms of revenue to get a great price for your newsletter.
- If you can show a great growth trajectory you don't need to worry about revenue.
- On average a subscriber is worth around $2.87/year for a newsletter with ad-based monetization. This is a great number to at least get some sort of value on your newsletter. From there you can start your journey to find a more true price.
- A premium paid newsletter has a much higher average price per subscriber compared to an ad-based newsletter.
- Always price your newsletter on the future projections of it. What will it be making in a year or two from now? It's up to the creator themselves to sell the future of that potential.
- The audience you choose to cater to for your newsletter will play a crucial role in how much it's going to sell for.
- List size is interesting, but if your newsletter is making 10x compared to another newsletter with the same list size and even the same niche, then it's going to be worth much more.
- Subscriptions based newsletters can fetch a higher multiple when selling, but an ad-based newsletter can grow much faster.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Chris Osborne: https://kintu.co/, @KintuLabs
- Ivy Lee: https://letterxchange.com/
- Jonas: http://duuce.com/, @jonastwt
About this episode: This week we're speaking to Uri Bram, a publisher at The Browser, which is literally the number one curation based newsletter on the internet today. In this episode, we'll cover some juicy topics such as why The Browser moved from Substack over to Ghost, how they were able still be around after 10 years, their pricing plans, and so much more.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights:
- If your newsletter is a curation based newsletter, you should be able to understand within the first sentence if it's going to be a good article to include.
- The internet needs more curators, not more writers.
- It was much harder to start a paid newsletter 10 years ago. It's never been easier to start today.
- It doesn't make sense to roll your own tech when someone else is providing it already.
- Once you've hit a certain revenue number, it simply doesn't make sense to stick with the platform.
- Don't simply choose one platform and use that for the life of your newsletter. It is OK and encouraged to switch to the right provider when it's time.
- The relationship between the publisher and the reader is very important. Newsletters enable you to have a more intimate connection with your readers.
- Newsletters can serve the reader with a great reminder of why they are still subscribed to you.
- The good newsletters will make it, the bad ones won't. Dedicate yourself to the craft if you want to make it.
- Even if the newsletter market is oversaturated now, good newsletters will have a following and will stand out from the crown.
- Subscription newsletter pricing is more of an art and a feeling versus a hard science. Entertainment based newsletters are more price-sensitive compared to newsletters with more actionable business advice.
- The value of digital products is still in its infancy. What's more valuable: a $5 cup of coffee or a month's worth of amazing curated content? Clearly the curated content. As consumers, we're still not seeing that value when it's a clear winner.
- Less for more is going to take a while to seep into people's minds.
- Most people that are succeeding in newsletters have just been doing it for a very long time. Keep it up, be consistent, never give up, and you will reach success.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Uri Bram: https://uribram.com/
- The Browser: https://thebrowser.com/
About this episode: This week we have Monica Lent, a successful newsletter creator, and developer. She runs Blogging for Devs which has over 1800+ subscribers and also achieved Product of the Day on ProductHunt. In this episode, we’ll discuss her welcome emails and email course challenge that has seen very impressive retention rates for her newsletter.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
How To Improve Your Newsletter Welcome Emails: Best Practices & Examples
Show Notes & Insights:
- Create standalone mini-products (newsletters) that help market your main product
- Increase growth by writing great landing-page copy. Keep it simple and actionable.
- When you launch your newsletter ask for support from your community, friends, colleges, and anyone you know. Let them help you reach as many people as possible.
- Make sure your landing page speaks to your ideal subscribers. For example, if you're targeting developers don't make it too markety. Understand your ideal subscriber intimately. to uncover these types of insights.
- Don't underestimate the power of word-of-mouth for subscriber growth.
- Use your welcome email as a way to gather feedback on where your subscribers came from. As you gather more and more insights, you'll begin to understand where to put your focus.
- Welcome email tip: include three questions to increase welcome email reply rates. Why are you here? How did you hear about us? What do you hope to learn?
- If you have a call-to-action in your welcome email to respond, you could spend hours a week replying and conversing with your subscribers. This is how you build super fans.
- Building a community around your newsletter will bring greater subscriber intimacy.
- If your newsletter requires a baseline of knowledge to understand and keep up with, try adding an email course before getting into the newsletter to bring the subscriber up to that baseline.
- An email course is better than a lead magnet since it really shows you that a subscriber is committed to being on your list rather than simply subscribing to the lead magnet.
- Once you understand your audience intimately you can then build an effective funnel. One audience may love lead magnets. Another may love email courses. And even another may love something completely different.
- A 7-day email course can increase retention rates of subscribers since you start the relationship off with daily touchpoints, thus building that relationship up quicker.
- Newsletters are just another way to build relationships.
- Your newsletter might find use in an email course if it's goal or outcome orientated in some way. This is usually educational based newsletters. Content curation or news based newsletters probably won't benefit too much.
- An email course is a great way for your subscribers to do something with the information gained from your newsletter.
- Make it as simple as possible with your newsletter.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Monica Lent: https://monicalent.com/
- Blogging for Devs: https://bloggingfordevs.com/
About this episode: Ever wondered if you should niche your newsletter down more? Do you know what to focus on when going from 100 to 1000 subscribers? What about from 1000 to 10k subscribers? On this episode, we speak to Josh Spector of For the Interested and discuss these burning questions. We'll also dive into his top subscriber resources, if we're in a newsletter bubble, newsletter marketplaces, and so much more.
Episode Sponsor: EmailOctopus
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights:
- Don't be afraid to pivot your newsletter as the years go by. See what your audience is wanting and provide more of that.
- If you need to niche your newsletter down, then niche it down.
- In general, the broader your newsletter is the tougher it is to grow. It's counter-intuitive, but you want to create a newsletter for someone not for everyone.
- If your newsletter is broad, 10-20% of your audience will like everything you're sharing. The more niche, the higher percent your audience will enjoy every piece of your newsletter.
- A niche doesn't necessarily need to be demographic or topological, it can be psychographic. As long as it connects the dots for your readers.
- Writing evergreen content will significantly increase ROI.
- If you have a blog you need to have an email list or newsletter. The days are gone where someone's just going to check your blog if you've posted anything new. You need that distribution channel now.
- Don't become paralyzed by choosing the right technology to run your newsletter. Pick something and start. You can always switch later. For example, EmailOctopus takes a few minutes to import your email list and you're on your way.
- At every level of your newsletter, your main focus is to always provide value. That's arguably the most important piece to the puzzle. If you do that, everything else will work. It's why people stick around, it's why word-of-mouth happens, it's why your newsletter is worth subscribing to.
- Going from 1k to 10k subscribers is all about honing in on your content and really understanding who your audience is and why they are subscribed to your newsletter.
- Subscription fatigue is a very real thing. Most creators wanting to start a paid newsletter is easy. It's not.
- An annual subscription model is going to be an ever-increasing model for paid newsletters since subscribers are over paying monthly. They have a lot of subscriptions.
- An annual subscription is better for a newsletter creator since churn is high for paid newsletters. Locking them in for a year gives a much higher return and also a full year to show them the value before their renewal date.
- The biggest value of running a newsletter is building a habit to consume, learn, and think about a certain topic.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Josh Spector: https://joshspector.com/
- For the Interested: https://fortheinterested.com/
About this episode: This week we dive deep into Manu Cinca’s newsletter Stacked Marketer, a newsletter that is earning $14k/month. We’ll discuss topics such as finding advertisers, inbound and outbound advertisers, Facebook ads, and newsletter ads. We’ll also discuss Stacked Marketers three main reader acquisition channels, the effectiveness of ads written in the newsletters own voice, and so much more! This episode is critical for anyone interested in really building a profitable newsletter.
Episode sponsor: InboxReads
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights:
- The best time you sell your newsletter is when you don't need to sell your newsletter.
- Find a niche that's underserved. Create your newsletter around that niche and fill that value-gap that's there. You'll see great success!
- Once you have content nailed down your newsletter tends to become nicely scaleable.
- The more cash you have in the bank, the more options you have to make a sizable bet on your newsletter.
- Your newsletter reader acquisition strategy should include the following: a referral program, paid marketing (other newsletters, Facebook ads, etc), and cross-promotions.
- Stacked Marketer's referral program brings in about 20% of the newsletter daily newsletter subscribers.
- Something many new newsletter creators may not know, but It's common for Facebook ads to completely shoot-up in price around the New Years' time.
- Take a shot at advertising in other newsletters adjacent to your niche.
- Newsletter advertising generally has a lower reader acquisition cost than other channels (i.e. media buying).
- Newsletter ads > Facebook ads
- If you're looking to advertise in other newsletters you don't need to go super niche. As long as the general audience has some overlap with your newsletter.
- Usually, newsletters that are competing with you probably won't want to cross-promote or even take money from you for advertising. Find adjacent niches to target.
- Actively have benchmarks you're working toward.
- 1/3 of the advertisers book more ads with Stacked Marketer.
- The click quality matters more than the click-through rate.
- When you're starting with advertising you'll hit good months and bad months. Once you've been well established, then you'll start seeing a steady stream of advertisers.
- Don't focus on outbound advertising acquisition. Most newsletter creators get their advertisers inbound.
- Finding advertisers outbound is a high effort with little reward.
- If you're looking for advertisers simply focus on subscriber growth. First, it gets you more inbound advertisers (more informed too). Second, you're able to charge more to that advertiser as you grow.
- It's too difficult to convince someone who's not familiar with newsletter advertising or your newsletter specifically to sponsor it.
- Inbound advertisers > outbound advertisers
- If one week you don't have a sponsor slot filled, replace it with " This could be your ad here" or something similar. Remind the readers that they have an opportunity to advertise in your newsletter.
- Never place a word-for-word advertisement by the advertisers. Make sure to write it in such a way that it fits naturally into your newsletter. This will help conversion rates as well as makes it pleasant for the readers.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Manu Cinca: https://twitter.com/emanuelcinca
- Stacked Marketer: https://www.stackedmarketer.com/
About this episode: This week we have the successful Casey Botticello with us. Casey is a very successful blogger and newsletter creator. He’s one of the few recipients of the Substack Writers Grant, creator of the Substack Writers Facebook group, and has over 10,000 subscribers on his newsletter called Blogging Guide. In this episode, we’ll cover his perspective on blogging versus newsletters, open rates, and optimizing paid conversions on Substack. We also have a second part of this podcast which will cover how to create digital content to increase ROI and revenue and creative uses of newsletters. To get access to this second part, join the Newsletter Crew community.
Episode sponsor: SparkLoop
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights:
- The funding a16z gave Substack makes them a company to be taken seriously with especially with larger publications.
- Newsletters have been around since the internet was been around, but Substack was able to create a platform where it had everything a publisher would need to be successful.
- Substack was able to combine WordPress (CRM) and any email marketing platform into one.
- Blogs are great to get surface area. You have access to SEO, longer-form writing, and generally more eyes on it. While a newsletter is great for building an audience.
- Even an archived newsletter probably won’t get as much SEO traffic as a blog.
- Blogs are mostly meant to be useful pieces of content. While newsletters tend to convey more of the personality of the creator.
- The medium is the message.
- There really is no definitive answer on when and what day is the best to post your newsletter.
- The real difficult part to establish is the date and time for a paid newsletter.
- Most of the top business newsletters (Stratechery, Sinocism, etc) send their newsletters out between 9 am-10 am, where most business professionals are at their inbox.
- Some newsletters see higher open rates and free-to-paid conversions around 6 pm. Each newsletter is unique and you should experiment with when to send your newsletter.
- Send more newsletters to the free subscribers. This will encourage more paid conversions.
- Deviating from your standard schedule might entice a higher open rate since subscribers could see this as something more actionable than the standard.
- To increase free-to-paid conversions on Substack, utilize the subscriber welcome page and point them to your best content.
- On Substack optimize the unfinished email subscription page. This is the email that free subscribers of Substacks get when they haven’t upgraded to a paid version. This should be your professional sales copy page.
- Provide your paid subscribers clear and demonstrable value with their subscription.
- Give away and include content upfront with a paid subscription. Show the value of the subscription. This will increase paid conversions guaranteed.
- Every paid subscriber’s expectations are different, so the safest way to provide value is to over-deliver.
- If less than 10% of your new subscribers are paid subscribers then you should focus on converting your list more.
- If over 10% of your new subscribers are paid subscribers then you should focus on more content.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Casey Botticello: https://caseybotticello.com/
- Blogging Guide: https://bloggingguide.substack.com
- 20% discount to Blogging Guide: https://bloggingguide.substack.com/newslettercrew
About this episode: This week we have the first Newsletter Crew community episode. We’re going to start doing community episodes frequently now. These episodes will consist of having 3-4 members of the Newsletter Crew community come on and discuss hot topics within the newsletter space. And this week we’re discussing a very interesting topic. Are we in a newsletter bubble? This week we have Zahid, Reza, Rohan, and David joining us! Zahid is a newsletter publisher and maker of Mereku, a discovery platform for newsletter content. Reza, who is a writer and startup growth strategist and Head of Growth at Sorted and writes a weekly newsletter called Out of Curiosity, which promotes mental models to help you get 1% better every day. Rohan runs the Bootstrapped Branding newsletter which helps all kinds of early-stage entrepreneurs build killer brands without big budgets, personal connections, or prior experience. and David who runs The Land of Random, a newsletter rediscovering the magic of the internet.
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vnL75CsSKA
Episode sponsor: SparkLoop
Feature Newsletter Growth Story: This week we’re featuring Victor Lei, creator of The Average Joe newsletter. Victor’s newsletter is growing 30% faster with a SparkLoop referral program without having to lift a finger.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights:
- We’re still early in this newsletter cycle. The bubble is far out but coming.
- A lot of people will drop off after they either go back to work or their circumstances change.
- Are we really in a “bubble” or simply a hype cycle?
- Newsletters are becoming what blogs were ten years ago.
- Our tastes are shifting, we all want to go straight to the source.
- The ways, means of creation, and barriers are entry have been changed. It’s so much easier to start a newsletter today.
- Newsletters are a medium that will get more popular due to the sea of content that’s here.
- Newsletters get the keys to the kingdom.
- Most people who start a newsletter will drop off.
- There is something inherently human about newsletter type of communication.
- Newsletter fatigue is only happening in our own newsletter bubble. Normal people probably are only subscribed to one or two newsletters.
- Practice in public.
Newsletter Crew Community Guests:
- Zahid Lilani: @ZahidLilani, Mereku
- Reza Saeedi: @rezsaeedi, Out of Curiosity
- Rohan Gandhi: @timesnewrohan, Bootstrapped Branding
- David Nichols: @land_ofrandom, Land of Random
About this episode: This week we have the rising-star Brandon Zhang. His newsletter Weekly Wisdom has over 1050+ subscribers and is growing insanely fast. In this episode we’ll cover what Gen Z thinks of newsletters and if they’re even reading them. We’ll also dive into the importance of mastermind groups and the structure of the mastermind group Brandon is in. Then we’ll move into Brandon’s 25 newsletter growth tips.
Episode sponsor: SparkLoop
Feature Newsletter Growth Story: This week we’re featuring Nicholas Platt. His newsletter Lifespan saw growth from 0 to 50,000 subscribers with SparkLoops referral program.
Announcement: Newsletter Crew has just recently acquired InboxStash, one of the largest email newsletter directories on the internet. We just recently relaunched and invite you to submit your newsletter to the directory. It’ll be an amazing passive growth channel for any newsletter. Also, for members of the Newsletter Crew, you’ll have an exclusive spot on the featured section on the front page. Check out InboxStash here.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights:
- In the current state page views don’t matter, it’s all about how much of your audience you control.
- A small percentage of Gen Z are reading newsletters. Most of the newsletters they’re reading are in the business space. They get started on the bigger newsletters like The Hustle or Morning Brew. This opens them up to the more niche newsletters out there.
- The basic structure of the mastermind group should ask everyone is “What did you ship this week?”, “What do you want to change for the next week?”, and what was one newsletter that you really enjoyed, what made it so enjoyable, and what was one thing that they did right in that newsletter.
- The main function of a mastermind group is to hold everyone accountable and to share ideas.
- “A+ consistency with B+ quality beats out A+ quality with B+ consistency.”
- 6-8 people are the perfect number for a mastermind group to have.
- There needs to be a balance between depth on how each person goes but also try to keep meetings between an hour and an hour and a half. With 6 people everyone gets around 10 minutes to talk. With a group too big you won’t have the depth necessary to make the mastermind group effective.
- A great place to start to find a mastermind group is Twitter. You can also join the Newsletter Crew mastermind group if you become a member.
- A mastermind group should have everyone with around the same following as everyone else. You don’t want one person to have 10x the followers and experience. The value each person gets and gives will be disproportionate.
- Make sure to have a structure for each mastermind meeting. This helps the whole group be consistent and move forward.
- Consistency is not just about frequency but also about the quality of writing.
- Encourage communication. Make your audience feel like your someone they can empathize with.
- Try not including the issue number in your newsletter and see how open rates respond.
- If your newsletter is long-form, blog style, with new content you may simply not want to start with numbering your issues in the header. Make it personal from the beginning.
- Unsubscribes should be celebrated, it hones down the audience even further.
- Your newsletter is a reflection of you.
- A newsletter should be constantly evolving.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Brandon Zhang:https://www.brandonzhang.com/
- Weekly Wisdom: https://www.brandonzhang.com/newsletter
About this episode: This week we have Elijah Murray the founder of GritList. Elijah set an extraordinary commitment recently. He’s committed himself to publish a newsletter every week for 10 years! In the digital age, 10 years is an absolute eternity, and Elijahs going until the end. In this episode, we’ll discuss why Elijah committed to 10 years, why the opportunity isn’t always better, why execution is the key to success, and so much more. If you’re serious about building a newsletter you won’t want to miss this episode.
Episode sponsor: Hecto.io. Hecto is the platform for newsletter creators and internet businesses to buy and sell ads.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights:
- Newsletters are a great way to build an audience, find out what they need, and sell to them. No matter what product you’re building, you have that audience always.
- When your time horizon is years or even a decade, you aren’t as discouraged as much if you’re not seeing the growth you’ve set for yourself.
- If you’re committed to doing your newsletter, it doesn’t matter if the growth isn’t there right now because you have years to build.
- Set the bar really low with a very long time horizon.
- Keep focusing on the next article. And then the next, and the next.
- The problem that comes with more opportunity is jumping to the next thing that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be successful. Seeking out the next opportunity maximizes your exposure to opportunities, but jumping too often doesn’t allow you to capitalize on that opportunity.
- It doesn’t matter what you do. All that matters is how you do it and how long you commit to it.
- According to Derek Sivers, a brilliant idea is worth about $20 (and if you’re @levelsio an idea is worth $99). The execution is the deciding multiplier on how you can grow it.
- Push yourself past the executing of starting on a new idea.
- By jumping from one decision to the next you’re undermining your progress in any direction.
- Every newsletter creator should set a goal to commit to their newsletter for at least 5 years.
- Set your goal to a much simpler level to achieve.
- If you’re going to start a newsletter and commit to it for 5+ years, make sure it’s something you want to write about and do for that long.
- Just contemplating committing to 10 years of a newsletter, you’ll very quickly figure out if you’re wanting to do this. It’s a great thought experiment.
Memorable Quotes:
- “More Opportunity prevents you from making progress.”
Important Links:
- The 10 year rule
- Derek Sivers Multiply
- RadLetters interview with Yaro Bagriy
- Why you should be more unlikeable
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Elijah Murray: https://twitter.com/elijahmurray
- GritList: https://www.gritlist.co/
About this episode: This week our guest is the amazing Terry Godier of IndieMailer. Terry and I dive deep into the 3 types of formats newsletters fall into, monetization strategies for these 3 types of formats , and how to name your newsletter. This is a great episode for anyone who’s interested in starting a newsletter or has just recently started a newsletter and wants to better understand the newsletter landscape.
Episode sponsor: SparkLoop
Feature Newsletter Growth Story: This week we’re featuring the amazing and well-known newsletter creator Andrew Kamphey. He runs a newsletter called Influence Weekly – the newsletter report which the Influence Marketing industry reads every Friday. With SparkLoop he’s been able to grow at a 50% faster rate than before. Now he has his subscribers out there finding him new subscribers.
Announcement: Newsletter Crew has just recently acquired the IndieMailer community and has converted it over to the Newsletter Crew community. We recorded this episode weeks before the acquisition. But we’re excited to bring you the new Newsletter Crew community. The community includes forums, chat, and private podcasts. We’re so excited to have acquired the IndieMailer community. This is a huge step and forms one of the largest newsletter creator communities on the internet. We’ve opened registration back up. For only $19 per year, you can become a member and have access to successful newsletter creators, a helpful vibrant community, and amazing private content. All of this will help you become a more successful newsletter creator. You can join by going to newslettercrew.com and clicking subscribe in the header.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights:
- There are three types of newsletters. The blog by email, curation based, and product-based newsletter.
- The difference between a paid newsletter and a free newsletter is what you’re asking of someone else.
- Blog by newsletter format is for creators who are thought leaders and cover a particular beat to talk about it frequently.
- With a curation based newsletter, you can easily build authority in your space without having to produce a lot of content.
- No matter what type of format your newsletter is, there needs to be that personal aspect to it.
- There has been an increase in curation based newsletter because they are providing a real value add. They filter out all of the content that isn’t worth reading. Individuals simply don’t have time to do this themselves.
- Scott’s Cheap Flights, Chris Osbrones’s BitList, Dru Riley’s Trends.vc, and Softwareideas.io are some prime examples of a product based newsletter.
- Most people starting a newsletter won’t have enough traffic to do solid A/B testing on price.
- If you’re completely stuck on newsletter pricing, make it free then start asking your subscribers what they think it’s worth.
- Affiliate sales within newsletters is another legitimate way to monetize. This type of monetization model works well in a product or round-up based newsletter.
- Content is by far the hardest part of having a paid newsletter.
- Promise less, do more. Keeping up a cadence is hard. Start with less, then start increasing the frequency.
- Quality is the most difficult and most important part of a newsletter.
- When naming a newsletter you want it to be memorable, easy to spell and pass the elevator test. Shorter is better.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Terry Godier: https://twitter.com/TerryGodier
- IndieMailer (Now part of Newsletter Crew): https://indiemailer.com/
About this episode: This week we have Nic Getkate from The Slice, a curated newsletter for solopreneurs, bootstrappers, and indie founders. On this episode we’ll dive into Nic’s recommendations on how to improve your newsletter deliverability and shield it from the dreaded spam box. As we know having our newsletters hit the spam box is one of the worst things that could happen. So you don’t want to miss this episode if you’re interested in how to improve it. We’ll also talk about his monetization strategy as being a curation based newsletter. Then we’ll touch on the marketing channels he’s been using to grow his newsletter to what is not over 500 subscribers.
Episode sponsor: SparkLoop
Feature Newsletter Growth Story: This week we’re featuring the amazing newsletter Your Weekly Whine, a weekly newsletter to brighten up your day with a cute dog picture and some wine tips. Your Weekly Whine has seen 80% faster growth since starting to use SparkLoop for their referral program tool. Check our SparkLoop if you’re looking to achieve those growth numbers.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights:
- Don’t be afraid to pivot your newsletter and try different formats and topics out until you find what resonates with your subscribers.
- There has been an uptick in popularity with curation based newsletters and they’re much easier to create versus pure new content based newsletters.
- A newsletter doesn’t need to be some professional text, it can be casual. Many subscribers love that! It’s more personal.
- Stick to a deadline and plan exactly what you need to do every week. It takes time to create a newsletter.
- If the UI of your newsletter isn’t compelling people aren’t going to read it.
- Your newsletter looks the same as everyone else’s with Substack. There’s no personality with Substack.
- EmailOctupus plans are amazing and so easy to use.
- Make sure to be verified with whatever email service provider you’re using. This will help with your newsletter’s credibility.
- You must have certain levels of encryption for your emails to add extra credibility. Such as your SPF, DMARC, and DKIM.
- If your email sounds like it’s trying to sell something, it could hit the spam inbox.
- Don’t include words like sale, 50% off, discount, coupon, or anything that may sound like you’re selling something.
- Having your newsletter on our own domain will help with spam and deliverability.
- If you’re adding sponsors make it flow and fit with your newsletter so the subscriber doesn’t even notice.
- Sponsorship is better for a curation based newsletter. Subscriptions are better for original content based newsletters.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Nic Getkate: https://twitter.com/NicWondering
- The Slice: https://theslice.co/
About this episode: On this episode we’ll cover topics on how timing is crucial for newsletter success but absolutely doesn’t matter in the lifecycle of your newsletter. We’ll also cover how being prepared with help you catch as much luck as you can and monetize when the timing does happen. Then we’ll dive into using Twitter to grow your newsletter. How cross-posting and SEO can create a passive stream of new followers. And so much more! This was such an amazing and content filled episode that we had to create two part. So for all of the listeners who get to the end, we’ll tell you about how to get access to the second half where we dive into Stefans other acquisition channels.
Episode sponsor: SparkLoop
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights:
- Don’t live and die by your subscriber numbers. You must have other metrics. That could be the positive feedback per subscriber you’re receiving.
- Growth is an idea whose time has come.
- If you’re looking to build a large community you do need other people talking about your niche.
- Timing matters but writing your newsletter for long enough, its time will come. In the life of your newsletter, timing absolutely does not matter.
- Opportunity is at the section of luck and preparation.
- You must have at least 2 reasons for doing any major project.
- You should be in the mindset that a newsletter is a big project. It requires consistency. One is about the business itself. The other must be more personal.
- Stefan chooses @Substack still as his newsletter platform of choice is because it simply does it all for you. You just need to publish. No tech skills required. All of your dedication is focused on writing.
- Tweet ahead of time with a little drip of content from your newsletter to excited people into subscribing.
- When your newsletter publishes a new issue manually DM any follower that would genuinely like it. Tweet it out and add a quote or @ anyone that was mentioned in the newsletter. More Twitter tips in the podcast.
- Self-syndicate your newsletter by posting them as blogs on other websites. Effectively using SEO to drive subscriber growth.
- Cross-post between your blogs and your newsletters.
- The one big downfall of Substack is that you don’t own your domain. You can utilize guest posting, guest linking, and self-syndication to get around that and drive brand awareness through Google.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Stefan Palios: http://stefanpalios.com/
- Remotely Inclined: https://remotelyinclined.substack.com/
- Pulse Blueprint: https://pulseblueprint.com/
Mentions:
- Newsletter Crew Episode 5 with @Kamphey
- Shelly Spiegel @ShellyJSpiegel
- Hamish Mckenzie @Hamishmckenzie
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a * by @IAmMarkManson
- Atomic Habits @JamesClear
About this episode: This week will cover topics on repurposing your newsletter content, creating sales funnels that work for you, and the importance of having a sales funnel. Jens is an expert in email marketing and he’ll discuss in the detailed importance of repurposing newsletter content as well as why it’s beneficial to every newsletter creator to have at least a basic sales funnel. The best newsletter creators are able to repurpose their newsletter content in many ways, effectively maximizing their surface area on the internet. Every week newsletter creators spend hours upon hours creating unique content. Why not repurpose that in as many was as possible? Content repurposing also expands the top of your sales funnel with little to no work.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights:
- Email is the only platform you own.
- You don’t own your Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc. It’s on rented land.
- Email is a very intimate way to communicate with your fans, followers, and customers.
- Repurposing content is huge when you’re running multiple newsletters.
- Ways to repurpose your newsletter: create a twitter thread out of it, visual tweets, blog post, create a podcast episode for every issue.
- If you’re spending hours doing research for your newsletter, you should always repurpose is in as many ways as possible.
- The main goal for any company is to get people on your mailing list.
- You don’t want to sell stuff publicly. Sell privately in your newsletter.
- If you’re looking to repurpose your content as a podcast but aren’t the best at it, you can simply read your email newsletter as an audio version.
- If you’re looking to launch a paid version of your newsletter, it’s crucial to build trust with your subscribers before you do that.
- Building trust is all about creating value-first content.
- Choose a niche where you’re the only one doing what you’re doing.
- The best way to turn your audience into subscribers and subscribers into pay subscribers is to visualize the marketing funnel.
- Creating an even basic sales funnel will be enormous for your email list and business.
- It’s much easier to improve something that already exists than it is to create something from scratch.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Jens Lennartsson: http://jenslennartsson.com/, https://twitter.com/JensLennartsson
- Make & Market Newsletter: https://makeand.market/
- Twitter for No-Coders: https://gumroad.com/l/nocodetwitter
About this episode: On this episode we have Ari Lewis talking about newsletter bundling. As we’ve seen the rise of the independent newsletter creator, we’re also now seeing the next phase of bundling happening. There are already many examples of newsletter bundling today and as you’ll hear in this episode that it’s a great way to capture a whole new audience. This is an episode you don’t want to miss if you’re interested in the future of newsletter monetization.
Episode Sponsor:
GoodBits: https://goodbits.io/?ref=newslettercrew, use code newslettercrew to get 25% discount off any plans.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights:
- Newsletter fatigue is real and has been ever increasing.
- In the past, there was not enough content and the distribution was limited. Today we have too much content and the distribution is abundant.
- Newsletters pose a value trade-off vs attention trade-off. If the newsletter provides enough value subscribers will give their attention to it.
- “Bundling produces value for both consumers and providers by giving access for and revenue from casual fans.”
- By bundling products you’re actually getting access to a whole new group of consumers who may have not paid for your newsletter in the first place.
- Bundling allows gaining access to revenue from consumers you may have not had access to in the first place.
- Bundling is an art more than it is a science.
- At some point, there’s a transition that occurs where the value of the brand is more important than the value of the writer.
- With newsletter building, it all comes down to the author and bundle on if the author will own the audience.
- Medium and Substack differ only in that with Medium they own the audience and with Substack you own the audience.
- Ultimately the bundles that will succeed are the ones that will provide value.
- It doesn’t matter how big your user base is, all that matters is that you’re adding value.
Guest + Newsletter Info:
- Ari Lewis: https://www.arilewis.com/, https://twitter.com/amlewis4
Important Articles:
- Why Bundling is the Future of Paid Newsletters?: https://www.arilewis.com/aris-posts/why-bundling-is-the-future-of-paid-newsletters
About this episode: Today we have Louis Nicholls. I’ve known him on twitter for quite some time now and I have to say he’s an amazing founder and newsletter creator. Louis runs two newsletters. Sales For Founders, which is a newsletter but also an in-depth course as well. His second newsletter is Five Minute Founder, which is a passion project newsletter with actionable, concise advice to improve your startup/company by 1% each week. Only what you need to know, in five minutes, with examples. In this episode, we’ll dive deep into growth and referral programs. Louis is an expert in referral programs since he founded a referral program tool for newsletters called SparkLoop. If you’re interested in if referral programs are right for your newsletter then you won’t want to miss this episode.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights:
- Louis says newsletters are not a good business to start. What a newsletter is good for is to connect with an audience that wants to buy something from you at a later point in time.
- Sales for Founders newsletter is not the business itself but is a tool to build trust and get in front of the right audience to sell his course.
- Newsletters are a great way to have conversations at scale with your audience.
- There are two schools of thought in newsletter monetization. Either the audience is the product via sponsorship, ads, and affiliates. Or the audience is the customers via subscriptions, courses, ebooks that directly come from you.
- Having the audience as the customer for your newsletter is a much easier and more fulfilling way to monetize. You don’t need to worry about what a third party cares.
- Every newsletter has its own monetization strategy. It all depends on the creator. Some like sponsorships and ads, while others use their audience to sell a course or ebook.
- IndieHackers, Twitter, cross-posting, answering questions on Reddit or other communities, SEO, and a referral program are all amazing ways to market and grow your newsletter.
- You don’t simply want to build an audience, you want to build an engaged audience.
- Word of mouth referrals require little time and costs little but has huge growth potential. It’s a great middle growth channel for any newsletter.
- Referrals thrive on your audience reaching out to their audience to build your newsletter for you.
- A great subscriber number to have when starting a referral program is around 500 subscribers. This makes it worthwhile in terms of the amount of time needed to set up the referral program versus the return you’ll receive. At around 2000 subscribers is when you should absolutely have a referral program.
- Referral program growth is based on 3 levers. The incentive the subscribers receive, the frequency you’re doing the referrals at, and how easy is it for your subscribers to refer others.
- The more general your newsletters are the faster your newsletter will grow. It’s much harder for a subscriber in a small niche to find 10 others to refer that would be interested in that niche. In the end, it’s all comparative growth versus absolute growth.
- Info products are a great and cheap referral product to give away for high-reach growth.
- Reuse your content as a reward for your referral program.
- Facebook ads are low effort marketing channels. The downside they cost a lot of money to get subscribers in the door.
- Twitter and posts are high effort but low cost. SEO is a high effort but a scaleable way to grow. Referrals are right in the middle of all of these three.
Guest + Newsletter Info:
- Sales for Founders: https://salesforfounders.com/
- Five Minute Founder: https://www.fiveminutefounder.com/
- SparkLoop: https://sparkloop.app/
- Louis Nicholls: http://louisnicholls.com/
About this episode: On this episode of the Newsletter Crew podcast we have Rosie Sherry. She’s the expert on community building, community manager at IndieHackers, founder and unschooling mother to my 5 children. As a community builder myself, I really look up to Rosie and her insights. I’m so glad I had the chance to speak with her. We’ll discuss Rosie's newsletter called Rosieland, value adds to premium newsletter subscriptions, how newsletter creators can expand on their newsletter by building a community around it, and the ways they can accomplish that goal.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes & Insights:
- Many people think they know how to build communities by adding a lot of tech to it. Rosie does not believe that’s what creates sustainable communities.
- The easiest way to break into any subject is to create a curation based newsletter around it.
- A weekly newsletter creates accountability for the creator to produce something weekly and keep up with their niche.
- Rosie has a weekly free curation based newsletter. Her paid version has more in-depth blog typewriting and also a private notion board.
- Rosie has been considering doing chats, meetups, and podcasts to bring more of a community gathering around her newsletter.
- It is not essential to build an audience first before you can start building a community.
- A premium subscription makes the newsletter creator accountable to deliver content weekly.
- Rosie wouldn’t have gotten her paid subscribers if she hasn’t spent the 43 weeks prior to sending out her free newsletters.
- To create more community with your newsletter start adding extra dimensions to it. Virtual meetups, podcasts, webinars, etc.
- The most successful newsletter creators turn their following into a community.
- Substack is moving into a more community-centric platform.
- If you’re looking to start a community from your newsletter you need to start knowing who they intimately are.
- You don’t need to be an expert to create a successful newsletter in your niche. You simply need to want to be an expert.
- Results will come with the habits you build.
Guest + Newsletter Info:
- Rosieland: http://rosieland.substack.com/
- Rosie Sherry: https://www.rosie.land/
About this episode: This week we have Falak Sher a med-school dropout turned newsletter creator. Falak spends 4 hours a day on his daily newsletter called IndieLetters, a newsletter curating the best content of IndieHackers. This episode we’ll discuss Falak’s daily workflow, how he reduced his 4 hour a day newsletter to only 2 hours a day, his newsletter tools, and much more!
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Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Show Notes:
- IndieLetters was born when Falak saw it was very difficult to digest all the information on IndieHackers.
- IndieLetters uses a custom landing page with MailerLite for email hosting.
- MailerLites free templates are much better than MailChimp.
- Falak will launch IndieLetters on many different newsletter directories such as LetterList, InboxReads, Thanks for Subscribing, NewsletterStack. Also ProductHunt and Reddit.
- Falaks advice for individuals wanting to start a newsletter is simply to throw up a one-page landing-page and start writing.
- His newsletter is a learning tool to help him build his SaaS business.
- The two tips Falak has for growing your newsletter are to deliver quality over quantity and embed sharing links inside the newsletter.
- Once a month request your newsletter subscribers to share the newsletter.
- Create a share link with http://sharelinkgenerator.com/
Newsletter Directories Mentioned:
- InboxStash
- LetterList
- InboxReads
- Newsletter Stack
- Thanks For Subscribing
Guest + Newsletter Info:
- IndieLetters: https://indieletters.com/
- Falak Sher: https://twitter.com/FalakDigital
About this episode: This week we have the legendary Chris Osborne with us. Why is he legendary you’re thinking? Well, Chris built two successful newsletters that you may have heard of, FoundersGrid and Crypto Weekly, that just recently were acquired. He’s also built and launched twenty newsletters in twenty days. This is the first serial newsletter creator I’ve met. In this episode we’ll cover the acquisition processes for FoundersGrid and Crypto Weekly, why newsletters are one of the best businesses to start today, his recently launched course targeted toward newsletter creators called Profitable Newsletters, and his newsletter tech stack recommendations. If you’re starting out or are a seasoned creator this is an episode that you won’t want to miss.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Key Notes:
- Crypto Weekly was created and targeted to a very specific audience. Chris imaged the newsletter to be a weekly check-in at 5pm on Fridays for investors to get a full overview of what happened that week in the crypto space.
- The acquisitions of both of these newsletters were very serendipitous. He knew people interested in that space, hoped on a few calls with them, arranged a price. No lawyers were involved. The whole process took two weeks from start to close.
- Chris was losing interest in running Founders Grid which had led him to think about selling it.
- There are too many factors to consider for there to be a template on how much you should sell your newsletter for.
- Crypto Weeklys growth was pretty stagnant when he sold it.
- Newsletters are a great business to build online because they are very inexpensive to get set up, you can start and launch it within an hour or two, and they are really helpful.
- Curation based newsletters are a great service since it outsources the work of digging through so much bad content to find the gems. This saves subscribers valuable time and is a net positive for everyone.
- Sponsors love newsletters on the business side since they can get their product in front of their target audience in a very personal way.
- Curated content newsletters are very hard to pull off with the standard subscription model. For these types of newsletters, it’s best to go the sponsorship route. Most paid subscriptions newsletters are original content.
- Subscribers pay a monthly subscription to hear the thoughts and opinions of a certain author.
- Chris’s course Profitable Newsletters is content filled without the fluff and is meant for anyone thinking about starting a newsletter as a side hustle, main gig, or for a company.
- If there’s a subreddit of your niche then you can create a newsletter for that niche.
- Chris Osborne’s recommended newsletter tech stack: Carrd for the landing page, Email Octopus or ConvertKit for the email delivery service
- Carrd provides stunning landing pages for a very cheap price and it’s easy to set up the domain mapping too.
- Email Octopus has a large free plan any newsletter creator can leverage.
- ConvertKit has outstanding support.
- Chris’s number one tip for someone starting a newsletter is to simply don’t give up. There are too many people giving up too early and it’s a shame.
Important Links:
- Profitable Newsletters course: https://kintuhq.podia.com/profitable-newsletters/hdixb
- I launched 20 newsletters in 20 days – here’s what I learned: https://kintu.co/20-newsletters/
Guest + Newsletter Info:
- Chris Osborne: https://kintu.co/
- Profitable Newsletters: https://kintuhq.podia.com/a/hdixb
About this episode: In this week’s episode we have Henry Johnson of RocketShip Jobs. His newsletter is unique in that it’s at the intersection of a job board and curation. We’ll dive deep into how he’s upselling subscribers to a paid version of the newsletter and how well that’s been working for him. We’ll then move into his custom tech stack which enables him to customize his website so that he can add features like upselling. He’ll give us an amazing explanation of why he moved from Substack to his custom solution. Then we’ll end off with his marketing strategy, how he grew his newsletter to over 500 subscribers and his next growth goals. This episode is paramount for anyone looking to really build a real newsletter business.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Key Notes:
- Henry uses many different tools to gather his jobs. Some include Crunchbase, VCs of Twitter, communities he’s apart of, other newsletters, podcasts, exploding topics, etc.
- His premium version includes extra information that anyone interested wouldn’t want to pass up. That’s where the critical and most important information is.
- When someone subscribes to the newsletter they are redirected to an upsell page telling them all of the extra features they will get by becoming a premium member.
- Henry switched over from Substack to his own custom newsletter stack to own his traffic, gain SEO, have customizability in his newsletter signup flow. Also he didn’t want to bother the user from having to get their credit hard out again to signup if he even decided to switch later.
- Substack does not provide the customizability that many newsletter creators are looking for.
- It’s not as easy as people think to build their own custom newsletter solution.
- RocketShip jobs newsletter tech stack: Webflow for the landing page, Memberful who’s paid vs not paid, ConvertKit for the emails, and Stripe for the payments.
- Substack does not have any integrations yet, which makes it hard to even add basic functionality.
- RocketShip Jobs primary marketing channels include Twitter and being featured in publications. Other marketing channels being looked into include a referral system and ads.
- SparkLoop is the referral tool being used.
- The number one tip Henry gave for anyone that wants to start a newsletter is that to pick something you want to write about and where you’re learning as you go.
Important Articles:
- Introducing the Not Boring Homepage: https://notboring.substack.com/p/introducing-the-not-boring-homepage
Guest + Newsletter Info:
- RocketShip Jobs: https://www.rocketshipjobs.com/
- Henry Johnson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/talktohenryj/
About this episode: This week we have the titan Andrew Kamphey with us. He runs two amazing newsletters, Influence Weekly and Better Sheets. He’s been newsletter space for many years and is one of the most knowledgeable individuals in this space. If you’re interested in the exact steps on how to grow your newsletter from 0 to 10,000+ subscribers, you really won’t want to miss this episode. We’ll also dive deep into monetization and sponsorships.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Key Notes:
- The subscriber count is not a good proxy for a newsletter lifecycle.
- Being specific doesn’t mean you’ll have a small audience.
- Just be specific on what you’re writing about.
- If you haven’t started a newsletter yet, just launch.
- Keep reaching out to your network for growth.
- Once you reach 50 subscribers, your goal is not to scale, your goal is to find the 51st subscriber.
- Your subscribers are the complete whole of two joined Venn Diagrams. There’s also a larger audience of anyone who’s interested in any of those parts.
- You’re going to get into people’s networks by featuring them.
- Specifically, email the people you featured in your newsletter.
- Who you are, your content and your audience will inform how you monetize.
- Each newsletter will have their own way of monetization. Some work best as a subscription-based model while others with sponsorship.
- Ads don’t necessarily need to be something that feels wrong. Curated ads can actually help users and be content on their own.
- Make sure your newsletter is informed, insightful, positive for your audience.
- On average, 150 minutes is spent going back and forth with a potential sponsor which may or may not lead to a sale.
- It’s a fallacy to think you need to hit the 1000 subscriber mark before you can start monetizing your newsletter.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “I would recommend within the first six months you should switch platforms.”
- “I started the newsletter to better my chances of having a career in this industry.”
- “I want a newsletter for billionaires.”
- “The content is only half the equation the other half is who’s it’s for.”
- “Anyone who writes a newsletter should have the word for in their description.”
- “Your mom should be subscriber one.”
- “You’re going to get into people’s networks by featuring them.”
- “In the growth phase of a newsletter find any way you can feature other people.”
Guest + Newsletter Info:
- Influence Weekly: https://influenceweekly.co/
- Better Sheets: http://bettersheets.co/
- HypeLetter: https://hypeletter.com/
- Andrew Kamphey: https://twitter.com/kamphey
About this episode: Climate change is a sensitive topic to talk about. This week we’ll discuss an amazing newsletter about climate changed, called Forge the Future. It’s an amazing weekly newsletter created by Oli Hall. In this podcast, we’ll breakdown the inner workings of his newsletter. We’ll figure out why Oli decided to start a newsletter about climate change. His newsletter workflow, length of creation, marketing channels, and so much more.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Guest + Newsletter Info:
- Forge the Future: https://forgethefuture.substack.com/
- Oli Hall: https://twitter.com/_oli_hall, https://www.oli-hall.com/
About this episode: This episode is filled with so many gems and knowledge dropping that you will want to listen to it twice. Justin Duke runs his own newsletter publishing platform, thus giving him insider knowledge of the newsletter creator market. In this episode, we’ll cover topics such as why you should write with your voice, monetization, why you need to start with a niche topic, optimal publishing frequency, and much more. You don’t want to miss this episode.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Guest + Newsletter Info:
- Buttondown Newsletter: newsletter.buttondown.email
- Weeknotes Newsletter: weeknotes.buttondown.email
- Buttondown: https://buttondown.email/
- Justin Duke: https://twitter.com/justinmduke, https://jmduke.com/
About this episode: Frank Meeuwsen is the founder of Thanks for Subscribing (https://www.thanksforsubscribing.app/), a newsletter curation website and newsletter. In this episode, we’ll discuss his newsletter workflow and the technology stack that he uses to automate and simplify his weekly newsletter down to less than an hour of work per week. We’ll also cover why newsletter creators should write with their voice and why owning your audience is so important. Another big topic that will be discussed is retention versus growth and why you should optimize when you start your newsletter.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Guest + Newsletter Info:
- Thanks for Subscribing: https://www.thanksforsubscribing.app
- Thanks for Subscribing Newsletter: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/thanksforsubscribing/
- Open: https://diggingthedigital.com/tag/open/
- Frank Meeuwsen: https://twitter.com/frankmeeuwsen
About this episode: Colin Bartlett is the co-founder of VimTricks (https://vimtricks.com/), a newsletter sending tips, tricks, how-tos, guides, videos, links, plugins, and everything about the Vim text editor. Colin has been an entrepreneur all of his life and this newsletter is yet another successful business he’s started. In this episode, we’ll dive deep into how Colin grew his newsletter by 1000 subscribers in one day with one simple trick. We’ll also cover why newsletter creators should build an audience first before monetizing. Colin co-founded VimTricks with his business partner Andy, we’ll take a look at how it’s like to run a newsletter business with a co-founder. I hope every listener takes away some useful information to grow and execute their newsletter.
Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): Join here
Newsletter Crew Membership Benefits: Click here
Other Topics Covered:
- Retention vs. Growth
- Marketing channels
- Newsletter workflow
- Guest + Newsletter Info:
- VimTricks: https://vimtricks.com/
- VimTricks Twitter: https://twitter.com/vim_tricks
- Colin Barlett: https://colinabartlett.com/